


The Shaker Bru: A Respone to Melissa McEwan's Criticism of Brave

by theviciouslily



Category: Brave (2012)
Genre: Disney, Feminism, Meta, National Identity, Pixar, Representation, Scotland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-08 20:39:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1955394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviciouslily/pseuds/theviciouslily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very belated response to the infamous Shakesville article.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shaker Bru: A Respone to Melissa McEwan's Criticism of Brave

So, I might be taking a media studies course while I'm studying abroad in Texas this year. I've been thinking about the sort of things I would like to learn more about. This got me pondering the "Strong Female Character" and I started asking myself "Who are Scotland's Strong Female Characters?" My first Google search led me to Melissa McEwan's [criticism](http://www.shakesville.com/2012/06/brave.html) of _Brave_ on Shakesville. I was quite saddened to see that the comments section had long been closed, otherwise I would have thrown my hat into the ring.  Instead, I'm posting my response to its key points here.

Two years ago, Melissa McEwan made a post about _Brave_. I say "post" rather than "review" because right off the bat she says:

 

 

 

> _So, I haven't seen Pixar's new film Brave. And I'm probably not going to._

Even as one of the most amateur of amateur reviewers, I firmly believe that everyone deserves their day in court. (Speaking of which, Ms. McEwan, you are free to reply to this post if you like. I won't stand in your way.) There's nothing wrong with speculating on what a film might be like before you see it, but if you've resolved to pass judgement on it, you should at least include the caveat that this is just what you have gleaned from the marketing and/or word-of-mouth from other people if you're not going to bother to watch it before critiquing it in a public sphere.

Anyway, on to the meat of the essay. What McEwan objects to in _Brave_ is that it trades in Scottish stereotypes. Is her objection that this misrepresents the true nature and character of Scottish people? Nope. Her issue with _Brave_ was that the creators were trying to use these stereotypes to have all the fun of using regressive tropes associated with non-white folks, but without having to feel bad about it.

 

 

 

> _Scottish people, with their clans and tartans and ubiquitous red hair, have become the go-to group for makers of pop culture who want all the fun of racial stereotyping without the charges of racism._
> 
> _"Scots are tribal with_ [ _weird indigenous clothing_ ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartan) _and_ [ _silly instruments_ ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagpipes) _and some_ [ _old language_ ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic) _and_ [ _funny words_ ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language) _and_ [ _goofy accent_ ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_English) _and_ [ _ginger hair_ ](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/819117.stm) _, and these facts have been used to marginalize this occupied nation for centuries, but they're WHITE, so it's okay!"_
> 
> _These are the exact things that have been used to paint reductive pictures of people of color in animated (and non-animated) films for years._

The middle section of this quote assumes that all these features are held up for ridicule in the film. If McEwan had actually bothered her shirt to see the movie, then she would have realised that this isn't the case. Making peace between the tribes is a serious issue that needs to be properly dealt with by the characters, nobody laughs at the tartan or the war paint, the accents are accurate, the actors were allowed to riff on the script, Disney actually created some new Gaelic content for the film with the lullaby, and no one rips into Merida or her brothers for being as ginger as a crate of Bru bottles. If someone saw a trailer for _Brave_ and thought "LOL look at these crazy white ethnics, this movie's gonna be hilarious!" then frankly, that says way more about them than it does about the film.

I can understand recognising a pattern that might be used on others to their detriment, but in my experience, neither I nor any other Scottish person I've met have found works far more stereotypical than _Brave_ as anything more than a mild irritation at the absolute worst. Trying to put this on a par with actual damaging ethnic stereotypes (like, say, _What Makes the Red Man Red_?) is just ridiculous.

From this, McEwan goes to detail what she believes are the consequences of _Brave_ 's portrayal of Scottish culture:

 

 

 

>   _Acknowledging that a universal white culture is a fallacy even though a universal white privilege is not, is an important part of dismantling white supremacy. Othering certain groups of white people isn't a part of dismantling white supremacy; in fact, it serves to reinforce the racist narrative that there is a default "normal (white) culture" from which people exclude themselves by being "different."_

Again, this works on the assumption that the film somehow scorns Scottish culture and it doesn't. No one culture in it is excluded from another. It's not like some explorer shows up and says, "You lot look ridiculous. Allow me to civilise you." Nobody's Scottishness is presented as something for the audience to weigh in on. It's a part of the characters' identity but it's not what's really driving the action in the story. No one is being "othered" here. There isn't a "them" or an "us" that the viewers can easily identify and side with. There is a clash in the film, because all stories need conflict, but at its most abstract it's about the needs of the many against the needs of the individual, not about how "Scottish people's way of doing things is weird and our way is so much better". Merida wants to be free to pursue her own course while her mum wants her to get married because she's the future monarch and her actions will have consequences for the whole kingdom. Elinor's desire to see her daughter married is for political reasons before it's ever about preserving a tradition for tradition's sake. (Arranged marriage is not an inherently Scottish thing, but I'll come back to that later.)

And so what if this film showcases some of the ways that Scottish culture differs from that of the American primary target audience? What's the alternative to being "othered"? Is it only ever focusing on the things that we have in common? Or is it recognising that no one culture is inherently better than the other provided that no one's coming to any harm?

Lots of us do feel like we are different from Americans, from English people, from Spaniards, from every other culture on earth, but not in a way that makes us any better or worse than anyone else. We know we've got plenty of stuff in common with other cultures, but there's plenty about us that's unique too. If a foreign film company decides to make a movie that shows that off to the world, then I don't see how that could be a problem as long as they take the time to do the appropriate research, which Pixar did. Obviously, it doesn't get absolutely everything right and there are bits of it that are up for debate, but nobody's perfect. The important thing here is that they actually made an effort. Moreover, if someone decides that we should be excluded from some overarching predominant culture because we're different, that's nobody's fault but theirs. Again, McEwan makes a lot of assumptions about what people will think as a result of seeing this film without actually seeing it for herself.

According to McEwan, if I'm not bothered by the way Scottish culture is portrayed in _Brave_ and I don't complain about it vocally, I'm enabling racists!

 

 

 

> _When people of Scottish extraction don't object to Othering, that silence is construed as tacit tolerance and used to suggest that peoples of color, particularly indigenous peoples, who object to similar treatment of their cultures are "oversensitive" and "overreacting" and all the other familiar silencing tactics._
> 
> _Meanwhile, when people of Scottish extraction do object—surprise!—the same silencing tactics are used against them._

I don't object to this aspect of _Brave_ not because I think anyone who disagrees with me is a whinging crybaby, but because I don't think the image _Brave_ projects is a negative one. In fact, it's pretty positive - Scots are centre-stage and not used solely as a punchline. There are far more potentially negative images of Scotland they could have chosen to look at, like the Glencoe Massacre, the debilitating post-industrial poverty, or the ridiculous case of [Tall Poppy Syndrome](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TallPoppySyndrome) we all seem to have. (Obviously, Disney wouldn't do any of those things because they're Disney, but my point still stands.) If I or other Scottish people don't actually say anything about it, it's because we think it's so trivial that it's barely worth mentioning.

Apparently, by failing to condemn _Brave_ , I'm saying it's okay to dismiss POC's concerns about being misrepresented. Rest assured that I'm not. That argument might be valid if I was trying to use my own feelings about Brave to write off other people's concerns about how their own ethnicity and/or identity are treated in the media, but I'm not. What I'm saying is that, while _Brave_ doesn't aim to represent a specific period in Scottish history, I think it captures a lot of different elements of our culture very well. I don't think we'll be at all harmed by it in long run. If anything, it'll be an economic boon if its fantastical anachronism stew gets more people interested in coming here for their holidays. It's also very telling that McEwan says "people of Scottish extraction" rather than just "Scottish people". She seems to care more about the feelings of the diaspora than those of the people who actually live here.

 

 

 

> _Dundee, we have a problem._

I think you'll find the correct pun is "Bellahouston, we have a problem."

 

 

 

> _I want to say, again, I am glad that Pixar made a film with a female protagonist. I'm glad that Pixar made a film with a Scottish female protagonist. Scottish girls need and deserve to see themselves represented as strong, as capable, as equal, as brave._

This section seems to imply that young lassies from Lerwick to Lockerbie have done nothing but sit around and feel ignored by Big Hollywood until Merida came along, and in my experience that just isn't true. McEwan makes it sound as if we're being marginalised in our own culture. LaughingScot made a comment on the original article that explains perfectly why this notion is completely bogus:

 

 

 

> _Melissa, I'm telling you now, as a white Scottish person, that you don't have to fight for us. We'll be okay. We really, honestly, don't give a damn about these "stereotypes" and in fact find them perfectly funny. I'm sure nobody on Earth actually believes that Scottish people all have red hair and live in little wooden shacks in a mythical wonderland, and even if they do, who cares? We're not oppressed, we're not marginalized for being Scottish (yes, even the ginger ones) and there's nothing we love more than to laugh at ourselves. Yes you can argue that back in our history we were oppressed by the English, but the fact of the matter is those of us who are white are just that: white people living in a culture where white is privileged above all other races. Race =/= culture._

(Obviously, non-white Scottish folks will have their own feelings about their representation within Scottish and even the wider British culture. I won't get into that since I'm not really qualified to talk about it, but feel free share your stories and comments down below. Let me know what you think.)

Look, I won't deny that _Brave_ did fill something of a cultural gap for me and that I would have loved it even more if had come out when I was wee, but that's got more to do with the actual story than the setting. It's a story aimed at kids about a girl and her mum, which is something of novelty given Disney's usual feelings about mothers. Yes, the setting is a point in its favour for me personally, but it's not the most important aspect of the film. 

This paragraph also seems to suggest that Scottish girls are experiencing some sort of representation crisis – that we haven't been able to see ourselves in a suitably positive light until Pixar entered the picture – and that just isn't true. We might not be the most prominent nationality in UK media for kids or adults, but let's not pretend _Brave_ came riding along on the crest of a wave over the Atlantic Ocean to rescue our daughters from their ignorance about their own culture and validate them as equals, or that Merida is the only feminist character they can ever hope to encounter before the watershed. I certainly never felt that way when I was growing up.

 When I was a very little kid 10-15 years ago, the lack of Scottish voices on telly or at the pictures didn't make me feel isolated because I didn't see a precise reflection of myself that could make me feel capable and courageous, I was just conscious of the fact that there weren't very many people who sounded like me in children's programmes or films, not just wee girls. It didn’t get me down at all, and that’s not to say that there was absolutely nothing available. Here's a brief selection of some of the Scottish stuff that I remember being about at the time:

  *         _Jeopardy_ \- a show about a group of teenagers from Falkirk hunting aliens on a school trip to the Outback. It had a pretty even split of boys and girls. I remember being hooked on it when I got the chance to watch it almost all the way through.
  *         _Shoebox Zoo_ \- about a girl who moves from Denver to Edinburgh and finds out she's the Chosen One and she must save the world with the help of a wizardy Peter Mullan and some magical animal carvings. (One of them was a snake with trust issues voiced by Siobhan Redmond, on whom I once had the biggest little-girl crush.)
  *         There was also _Stacey Stone_ \- a girl who ran an agony column in her school newspaper and dreamed of escaping dreary Cumbernauld (at least I think it was Cumbernauld) to become a world famous journalist.
  *         _Raven_ had a decent gender split between its contestants and I remember lots of them being Scottish. (I imagine they recruited locally since the first few series were shot at Castle Toward in Dunoon, which I once visited on a school trip).
  *         One of the two female hosts on the _Eureka_ science show was Scottish, come to think of it.



That’s just what I remember from television. There were other things as well, like the _Katie Morag_ books, _The Singing Kettle_ and Hopscotch Theatre coming to visit my school. I’m not saying they were perfect - it’s been a while since I’ve looked at them properly and some of them might have problems that went over my head as a kid - but they did exist.

Even if there were some sort of Scottish visibility crisis, I highly doubt it would ever be a gendered one. Most Scottish stereotypes of the kind you see in _Brave_ , the kind that reach the wider world, end up getting applied almost exclusively to men. Even stereotypes that persist in the UK - those of violent, alcoholic criminals and binge-drinking ladette single mothers - are pretty vague, much more rooted in classism than anything else and can be applied to just about any rough area across the four constituent nations. Obviously this isn’t a good thing, but the upshot is that there aren’t any specific stereotypes or overarching cultural trends that are used to police the behaviour of girls because “a good Scottish girl is X, or does Y, or doesn’t do Z…” and so on. I’m not saying that sexism isn’t an issue for us, but it’s more of the kind of sexism that’s encountered in the West as a whole.

 

 

 

> _I just wish they would have gotten it with fewer cauldrons and[ war paint ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts)and, well, this:_

 

What's wrong with woad?  We still love that shit. Case in point:

 

 With regards to the the mooning and the snotter jokes, toilet humour might not be everyone's bag, but at the end of the day it is still a mainstream kids' flick rather than a Studio Ghibli movie. Certain things do prevail - whether that’s good or bad is really just a matter of personal taste.

 

 

 

> _There could have been a story about a modern Scottish girl who resents the pressures of her culture to give up, say, her Olympic archery dreams and settle down and get married to a suitor of whom her parents approved. (_ [ _See also_ ](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286499/) _!)_

I can’t say I can see this working. For one thing, if the average Scottish teenager’s parents didn't support her sporting ambitions, it would probably be because they would want her to focus on her exams. (Shit, with the Commonwealth Games coming up, this scenario is even less likely at the moment.) Hard work and academic success are really highly valued here, and expectations are the same for boys and girls across all subjects. Attitudes were probably less egalitarian 40 or 50 years ago, but not now.

On top of that, these days there isn't much cultural pressure for women or men to get married just because it’s time to settle down. I suppose there can be pressure to have kids, but marriage isn’t really seen as an absolute necessity for procreation anymore. I would say that these sorts of pressures tend to come from individual pushy relatives rather than society as a whole. Nowadays there are plenty of people who decide to live together long-term, have kids and marry later or not at all. Arranged marriages do happen in Scotland, but it’s a practice that's been imported by Scots who also belong to minority groups (mostly from the subcontinent) and it has not been adopted by the privileged White majority at large.

(Sidebar: the hyperlink is to the IMDB page for _Bend it Like Beckham_ , which is a good example of a film about a girl who pursues a career in a traditionally male sport and going against her parents’ wishes to marry. What would a Scottish version of _Bend it Like Beckham_ be called, though? _Jammy Like Jinky_ ? _Gallus Like Gemmill_ ? I’ll think of something.)

 

 

 

> _But the thing about setting this story in some magical version of historical Scotland, in addition to disappearing Scottish people of color, is that it allows the gatekeepers of the Patriarchy to keep telling themselves—and everyone else—that the lack of true freedom for girls and women is a thing of the past._

As I've said before, I'll be the first to admit I don't really know how best to resolve the minority representation issue that this film has, so I'm very open to suggestions. Let me know what your ideas are. 

It’s true that historical and fantasy settings provide writers with an opportunity to take a holiday from modern social mores, but that’s not a bad thing. The reason stories set in the past, or magically-enhanced versions thereof, resonate with people is because we can still identify with characters and their struggles even if they aren’t completely identical to ours. It doesn't mean they are automatically editorialising on how we live know. _Brave_ was only superficially about sexism - its real story was one of familial conflict with the arranged marriage bringing all the tension between Merida and Elinor to a head. Nevertheless, I still wouldn’t hesitate to call it a feminist story because it was about two fleshed-out female characters and their relationship with one another.

 

 

 

> _A relic, like those mysterious stone arrangements erected by primitives._
> 
> __

 Point of information: those stones are most likely based on the Callanish Standing Stones in Lewis. Here they are being visited by the Olympic Flame:

 

Like I said before, they clearly did their research.

 

 

 

>   _To tell the story of a modern ginger-haired Scottish girl, and the intersectional oppressions she must navigate, would have been truly Brave._

Why should it fall to Pixar to tell the story of modern Scottish girl ahead of Scottish artists and authors? Like I said, they're a foreign company that operates in a very big and broad international market. They're hardly going to be the first port of call for Scottish viewers looking for stories about themselves.

What I also want to know is what constitutes an intersectional oppression, given that this post operates under the assumption that Scottish women are somehow oppressed in their own country. As LaughingScot pointed out, those of us who are White aren’t actually any more or less oppressed than the average western White woman. If this is case, does a “worthy” female Scottish character need to “tick another box” by being queer or disabled or in some other oppressed category? Is it enough if they are just “Strong Female Characters”, in the sense that they are well-written and well-rounded? If that’s the case, then I’d say there are fair few decent characters that have emerged from these shores over the years. Some noteworthy ones include:

  *         Suzi Kettles from _Tutti Frutti -_ Played by our very own Queen Elinor, Suzi holds her own the man's world of washed up rock-and-rollers whilst also recovering from an abusive marriage and putting aside all hopes of ever selling any of her paintings.
  *         Angelique de Xavia from _A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away_ , _The Sacred Art of Stealing_ and _A Snowball in Hell_ \- Glaswegian terrorist-foiling cop extraordinaire. Her author, Christopher Brookmyre, also created Jasmine Sharp, a twentysomething actor-turned-PI and working mum Detective Superintendant Cath McLeod.
  *         Lady Macbeth from, well, _Macbeth_ \- I always thought she was the real brains of the outfit. Macbeth was a credulous twit who got what was coming to him.
  *         The women of _The Steamie_ \- Tony Roper's play about 1950s Glasgow women is sentimental, but also heartfelt and understanding of the trials of being a housewife and of the highs and lows of working-class life. It even has a musical number all about the importance of female friendship.
  *         Nina Shah from _Nina's Heavenly Delights_ \- Nina returns to Glasgow for her dad's funeral after jilting her arranged fiance at the altar some years previous. She is then roped into a competition against her ex's dad to prove her mettle as a curry ninja and ends up falling in love with her childhood BFF and coming out to her family in the process.
  *         Liz from _Sunshine on Leith -_ Liz rejects her boyfriend's proposal to go away to a flash new job in Florida, but still manages to part with him as friends. Muted, but still worth mentioning, I think.
  *         Mrs. Hughes from _Downton Abbey_ \- she went to confront a rapist with no weapon and no back-up on behalf of one of her subordinates. It doesn't get much more hardcore than that. Most people I've heard from agreed that the rape plot of Series 4 could have been done much better, but this scene was flawless.



This list doesn’t include any women of note outside of fiction. What about our Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon? We've been well represented in journalism as well, with Kirsty Wark, Kirsty Young, Jackie Bird and Shereen Nanjiani to name but a few examples from recent years. [The Evening Times Scotswoman of the Year](http://www.eveningtimesevents.com/scotswoman/previous-winners/) award also has some great examples of women who've made significant contributions to fields such as medicine, social care and community service.

These are just a few examples of worthy stories, both fictional and non-fictional, that Scottish girls can turn to for affirming representation and/or potential role models, and I count _Brave_ as one of them. It wasn't a perfect movie - it clearly had some structural damage as a result of the it's troubled production - but we were still left with a women-centred story with a mature message about compromise and understanding and a film that perfectly captures the natural landscape of its setting as well. No’ bad goin’, overall.

Take my word for it, _Brave_ ’s no threat to us on a cultural level. Neither are Scotaboos who only have eyes for the shortbread tin version of Scotland. Yeah, we poke fun at them for being out of touch with the way we live now, but we poke fun at ourselves and our own flaws in equal measure. You wanna wear a kilt to a wedding? You wear the fuck out of that kilt. Just make sure you don’t stab yourself with the sgian-dubh if you’re giving it the full bhoona.

I’ll tell you what does offend me, though: it’s when someone who clearly knows next to nothing about Scotland breenges in and presumes to speak with some sort of authority about _my_ country and _my_ way of life, and all without even seeing the thing they’re condemning in the process. I don’t know what else I can say except that you should watch the movie and form your own opinions. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, and I have no problem with that. I’d still love to hear from you either way. If you want to see how _Brave_ fits into Scotland’s cultural landscape, then you could check out some of the shows I’ve mentioned in my essay. If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this ramble, it’s not that Scotland is some kind of post-feminist, wonderland whose national identity is perfectly represented in all forms of media everywhere that never has any sort of issues with racism or prejudice, because that's not the case. Just like everyone else, we’ve got our issues. It’s just that _Brave_ definitely isn’t one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I would like to mention, just in case I didn't make it clear enough in the essay, that the aspects of Scottish culture I've discussed here relate more to those touched on by the movie and do not reflect the diversity of Scottish culture as a whole, particularly not the invaluable contribution made by Scots who have additional roots in other cultures and/or parts of the world. 
> 
> Please feel free to share your comments below. Let me know if you spot any typos. You can follow me on tumblr at theviciouslily.tumblr.com


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